Chapter 769 Problems from Solutions
Five minutes later.
In the Kingdom of Lanthanor, the king was sitting along with the rest of his sovereigns while they watched a scene that was currently being showcased throughout the continent through the Network of Angaria.
He had ordered Percy to give some random excuse because he had no time to talk to the Head, and as the young Warrior was innovative as always, he had directly swooned and said that prison had not been well for him.
Although the Head had been slightly puzzled, he had said that he would talk later, and Daneel had reunited with his body right away, following which he had called the meeting after sending Percy back.
It was showing a large warehouse situated near a small village that had been peaceful for decades, but right now, the mud road that led through its center had been thoroughly stamped through as a horde of people had just marched through it with a singular direction in mind.
They were all headed to the warehouse nearby which had the name of one of the most prestigious trading families engraved in bold letters in front of it. Once, this name would have made many feel respect and even fear, but at present, a famous, or rather, infamous incident had changed all that.
Right as this horde reached the warehouse, they began to throw rocks that they had already collected on the way. A barrier sprang up to protect it, but it could hardly hold up against the hundreds of objects that were being pelted every second.
Indeed, this horde had already swelled to become at least around 500 people strong, and all of them were shouting slogans such as "Down with the trading families!" and "No more will you profit from our deaths! Down you shall go, down we shall take you!".
Even the guards of the warehouse were helpless in front of such large crowd, and one other thing that they knew was that all of these people were from the Alliance, which currently had the moral high ground. They had strict orders not to retaliate and only to ensure that the evacuation would proceed smoothly, because if they even thought of doing something like that, they knew that their already disastrous public image would plummet even further.
In the back of the warehouse, the evacuation had already begun two hours ago, when a clue had been received that the attack would commence here.
It was nothing new for the trading families, who were now in complete damage control mode. They were shifting their wealth and resources to secure places which could not be found easily by the people who wanted to take out their anger on everything that was related to them, but the problem was that each family was so large that they had hundreds of warehouses throughout the continent. It would be foolish to shift them all in panic, so they decided to take a wait-and-see approach, which often resulted in this situation where they could only depend on the barriers until the mages were done porting away all of the precious things stored in the warehouse.
Nine days ago, they had lost everything.
All the respect and power that had been earned over generations of hard work had all been destroyed in a single moment, and since then, the losses they had incurred were already more than what they had had to endure over the past 300 years.
In almost each and every part of the entire continent, because the Network had proliferated so much that there was almost no one who hadn't heard of it, the trading families were being cursed because of their greed.
Every time the leaders heard this, they felt like sitting on the ground and bawling helplessly, because for once, they were actually innocent. Yet, like monkeys caught a forest fire that had been started to target a pit of snakes that needed to be killed, they were those that were being burned the most while the one who had made them do everything in the first place was nowhere to be seen.
In fact, the first thing they had done was stop using the coins themselves, as they, too, had been terrified that the same might happen to them.
So far, there had been no communication, so they just continued to operate under the assumption that this plan was now scrapped, and they had to look towards the future.
Daneel was updated regarding all these things as soon as he arrived, and the internal reports regarding the trading families had been received from Jordan.
As he went through them all again, the situation in the display trinket escalated, because the barriers had just been broken down. The people had been learning - they had learnt that using jagged rocks was perfect against barriers because they had more penetrative force that would deplete the energy reserves faster, and in this case, they had already specially picked out such rocks.
The families had no way to account for this, and the evacuation was still not done.
A massacre looked like it was about to commence as recompense for what might have happened if the business of the trading families had continued, but Daneel turned to his side and nodded.
Eloise, who was sitting beside him with a rather grim expression, nodded in return as she saw him and sent some sort of signal, following which a team of mages who were wearing clothes that didn't allow anyone to see their features or affiliation appeared to teleport away the remaining people in the warehouse.
Frustration was visible on the faces of those in the horde as they saw this, as in the last few days, this had happened again and again. It was obvious that the trading families had employed these mages to protect their people, and this meant that they could only take out their anger on the objects left behind in the warehouse, which were mostly just useless scraps of wood or other trivial materials.
After watching for a little longer and seeing that the horde was about to go back to where they had come from on understanding that there was nothing else for them to do there, Daneel sighed and closed the display trinket.
Until now, this was probably the first time that he had seen that there could be so many more repercussions of what he did than he could ever expect.
He had expected there to be outrage, and he had even wanted to use it to his advantage.
Yet… It looked like he had made a cardinal mistake that was many famous people back on Earth had also committed - underestimating the power of mob mentality.
All it required was one person of a village saying that they could not let the trading families do as they wished, and often, the entire village would take up arms and march out due to the strong belief that no one would want to oppose such a large group of them, especially when they were in the right.
This often turned out to be true, because the trading families didn't even think of putting up any opposition knowing that it might incite the king of Lanthanor into deploying his renowned army.
Yet, the side effect of this was felt by the innocent employees of these trading families, who found themselves lynched and sometimes even beaten almost to death.
If Eloise and the others hadn't been keeping a close eye in Daneel's absence on everything on the continent, a lot of deaths would have occurred, but so far, thankfully, by keeping the team of mages on hold to teleport away such people, they had been able to ensure that there were only injuries.
If anyone died, the blood would be on their hands, just like Eloise had said, and he wasn't cold-blooded enough to not care about this, especially when these people had done nothing except look for employment so that they could feed their families.
The plan had seemed excellent before because he had only focused on the aspect of beating Jessica, but he hadn't really thought about this part. He had imagined that it would be easy to control them, and that it might just die down if the trading families were meek enough.
Yet, the main problem was that resentment against these families ran deep in many people's blood, as it was true that on multiple occasions, these trading families had been quite overbearing, sometimes even killing people indiscriminately if it meant that they could get their hands on some or the other business or resource.
Hence, now that Denny had ignited the spark, it turned into a brilliant fire that looked like it had no intentions of stopping anytime soon.
Without even intending to, he had practically thrown the entire continent into chaos.
If no one intervened, he was pretty sure that it would get so bad that thousands might end up dying, while resources which were worth tens of thousands of Ether blocks might also end up getting destroyed in the process.
This was something he was definitely not willing to see, and hence, the matter at hand was to decide how they were going to put an end to this.
Yet… It was easier said than done, because he was one who had promised justice so vehemently in the first place.
He almost felt like kicking himself as he remembered that, because even though the effect that he had desired had happened, it had spiraled into something that he would never want, just like an innocent snowball that turned into a deleterious avalanche.
It was a very strong lesson regarding how he should definitely not go ahead with plans, especially relating to large amounts of people, without carefully thinking of the worst-case consequences and planning out ways to handle them.
In many ways, the mistake he had made was similar to what had resulted in the ancient British Empire needing to leave all of the places they had colonized, because all of their plans had not accounted for the power of large groups of people who would fight as if they had nothing to lose if they were trodden down on enough.
With a grave expression on his face, Daneel spread his arms wide open and said, "Well, I f*cked up, but now its time to set it right. Any suggestions?"
Robert actually got an appreciative expression as he heard this.
Patting his son's shoulder, he said, "I was afraid that you might have gotten too…'kingly' to admit your mistake. Admission is often the first, and also the most important step."
Daneel couldn't help but smile as he heard this, and it was Eloise who spoke up after that.
"You appointed us as your sovereigns, and we took it to mean that we aren't just supposed to be subordinates who do your bidding. Just like how we took the collective decision to send out our mages to save these people, we have also devised a plan which might potentially help in this situation."
Daneel had been meaning to applaud his sovereigns for this decision, because he really would have been devastated if he had come out to find that he had the blood of thousands of innocent people on his hands.
Hell, that count could even have gone up to tens of thousands, as one really could not underestimate the power of a stampede that consisted of millions of people.
Thankfully, things hadn't gotten to that level, but it felt as if a single spark might cause it to happen. It was also why the other two forces had not swooped in, yet, because they must have understood that they might burn their own hands in the process if they tried to take control of this fire that had been lit by Daneel unwittingly.
As Daneel nodded, Eloise looked at the rest, and the seven sovereigns spoke out their plan, with each saying a part.
When they were done, Daneel actually…burst out laughing.
"Simple, but brilliant! I must say I have not chosen wrongly. My dear sovereigns, if ever I grow too complacent of my skill in planning, I ask that you remind me of this, and I will be infinitely grateful, as I will have remembered how I made such a steaming mess which had to be cleaned up by all of you, who rose to the occasion. Go ahead. For once, I will enjoy sitting in the backseat…"